Link. Not going to go well. M
Monthly Archives: August 2022
“Neptune, the outermost planet in our solar system, is roughly 2.8 billion miles from the sun. This exoplanet is almost 19 billion miles away”
Link. Suggests our system has distant exoplanets.
“Makeshift workshops experiment with 3-D printed materials, and Ukrainian coders have made workarounds for electronic countermeasures the Russians use to track radio signals.”
Link. Uk drones.
Chinese companies move off American exchanges.
Link. Too much oversight. Good riddance.
China: “smartphone shipments in the world’s largest market sank 21.7% on the year to 134 million”
Link. How are they not in a recession?
Instagram blunder reversal: “My own Instagram use went to near-zero after I received these changes.”
Link. Their metrics must have been catastrophic. Who thought this was going to work?
Trump’s alibi: “… Obama … Trump alleged, took “33 Million pages of documents…” He is referring to the materials for the Obama presidential library”
Link. Trump’s genius illustrated. This is effective because it’s sort of related to the truth, except for a huge difference that very few will understand.
Elder baggage handlers: “Most weeks she puts in 15 hours, the minimum to maintain access to the flight benefits afforded to all United employees”
Link. I pay people so I can lift heavy things. This is the job for me.
“Jones produces an incessant barrage of outrageous, thinly sourced or wholly mendacious content in the hopes that some of it will go viral. When people click on the stories and land on his site, they are bombarded with ads for snake oil.”
Link. Jones money comes from scam meds like INSTA-HARD.
Taiwan: “China’s military spectacle has been self-defeating”
Link. Xi is a lousy judge of how the world interprets his actions.
Arctic: “Over the past four decades the region has been heating up four times faster than the global average, not the two to three times that has commonly been reported.”
Link. “projections of future climate impacts might need to be adjusted”
macOS versions – complex and unreliable.
Link. I wish they’d never bothered.
Bipartisan spam expansion act expected to pass.
Link. We hates them.
“The App Store makes it easier for scams like this to gain traction because it’s easier to get discovery through App Store keyword SEO and fake reviews than it would be organically,”
Link. Apple’s App Store has failed. End the exclusivity.
“While right-wing figures are saying Trump’s lawyers were not present during the search, two of them—Christina Bobb and Lindsey Halligan—confirmed to Politico that they were there.”
Link. Someone flipped.
Extreme dog rescuing: deep in an inaccessible cave.
Link. 66yo caver hauls 14yo dog up long vertical. Dog should buy a lottery ticket.
“Guys are welcome to return to whatever sexuality suited them previously, but right now, guys, just give it some time.”
Link. So hard to say gay men should change behavior to reduce monkeypox risk. (Vs COVID behavior change)
Continuity Camera Turns an iPhone Into a Mac Webcam
Link. Ventura. This I’ll use.
Most iOS 15 and macOS 12 Monterey Features are not used.
Link. Fewer features, more bug fixes.
The Top PDF Reader in the Mac App Store … is a scam.
Link. We need a way to sue Apple. They don’t care.
Serena Williams: “Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I didn’t show up the way I should have or could have.”
Link. She may be a bit self-critical.
Underrated sci-fi and fantasy books
Link. “If I had to pick one book to be the “great American novel”, at least as far as the last half century is concerned, this might be it.”
Scientific Field Prefixes (xkcd)
Link. Thoughtful combinations.
“the law disqualifies from “holding any office under the United States” anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies or destroys…any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, fil
Link.
“If money earns a positive real return over time, that return doesn’t represent a reward for hard work done; it represents a freebie. A handout. In economic terms, this is called “rent”.”
Link. Great discussion.
iMessage and the Secret Service: of course the messages were lost with a device upgrade.
Link. I’m recently retired from federal service. The secret service message loss seems perfectly normal to me. I don’t think it was a conspiracy.
“two days after Meta released its most advanced AI chatbot to date, BlenderBot 3 is repeating election-denying claims and antisemitic stereotypes to users who interact with it.”
Link. Our children will be a lot like us.
“on January 19, 2021, the day before he left office, Trump revoked the authority he had previously given and named seven new loyalists as his representatives to the National Archives.”
Link.
“By 2035 the I.R.A., they estimate, will have delivered more than 90 percent of the emissions reductions that B.B.B. would have achieved. After all that legislative drama, Biden’s climate policy has emerged essentially intact.”
Link. Could be he’s lucky, but maybe he’s just good at presidenting.
Paxlovid only useful for higher risk? “patients who have already started to mount their own immune response benefit less from an antiviral, …. during infection in a vaccinated host.”
Link. Curbsider’s quickie. For all we know it interferes with developing a lasting immune response in the low risk. Save it for unvaccinated / high risk.
Covert bike AirTag – a fake reflector.
Link. Clever.
“In 1880, the South became solidly Democratic, and with white men keeping Black people from the polls, it would remain so until 1964.”
Link. The first battle against slavery was a win, but far from complete. The second took place in the 60s. Hoping this go round is easier.
Senate passes climate bill. Biden loses again.
Link. JK. He’s hooked on winning.
Subjectivity is baked into inflation data
Link. 1950 Burger comparable to 2020 burger, but we eat more burgers now. 1950 iPhone is bit spartan.
10 Books that showed future.
Link. Neuromancer omitted. That’s wrong. But this is a great list.
“Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels”
Link. Only the best.
Orban’s plan to destroy democracy.
Link. 12 points of course. Read this carefully. It’s a solid plan and proven effective. It is now the GOP’s plan. Note where he disses AQnon
Winger orgs get beaten IRS to calm them churches.
Link. “churches are exempt from submitting Form 990, the annual financial disclosure”
“Soon after the United States left Kabul, the C.I.A. sharpened its efforts to find al-Zawahri, convinced he would try to return to Afghanistan.”
Link. Overconfident.
You cannot search the Library in Apple TV.app on iPhone.
Link. Modern Apple reminds me of Trump. So stupid.
“When Dr. Duke asked what a fossil footprint looked like, Dr. Urban pointed out the window and said, “Well, kind of like THAT!”
Link. “The set of 88 prints is about 12,000 years old … found in the military’s Utah Test and Training Range.”
QuickLook bug: dark mode RTF can be invisible.
Link. “another bug that has been left untouched for four years across four major versions of macOS”
NYT designated conservative Bret Stephens on voting Dem: “a choice between a day-old baloney sandwich with a sad little pickle on a stale roll versus a plate of rancid chicken served with a sprinkling of anthrax on a bed of broken glass.”
Link.
GOP dirty tricks in Kansas referendum: “written the question so that a “yes” vote would remove abortion protections and a “no” would leave them in place. Then, today, a political action committee sent out texts that lied about which vote was whi
Link. Be funny if they confused GOP voters.
iOS Podcasts does not support search for episode.
Link. Only supports search for a Podcast source. I miss my home planet.
“The district, long a derelict area owned by the Afghan Defense Ministry, was converted into an exclusive residential area of large houses in recent years, with senior Afghan officials and wealthy individuals owning mansions there.”
Link. WaPo has most details on Zawahiri’s end.
“The precision strike hit Zawahiri as he stood on a balcony in a prosperous section of Kabul, Afghanistan”
Link. Context and history.
“The Murrays had an idyllic life in the country. They also had enormous rashes, strange joint swellings, and recurrent fevers.”
Link. Lyme history and the chronic Lyme cult.
What To Know About Pelosi’s Taiwan Trip
Link. “Who gives a shit what Taiwan thinks? This is about us and China.” The Onion.
CNN viewership down 27%, “Fox News …up about 1 percent”
Link. If you don’t like Fox you are going to have to stop paying for cable. Also, Trump was great for CNN. They must hate Biden.